Chapter Text
In a group apartment, somewhere in Inkopolis.
Even with all the money four mostly-broke cephalopods could ever want, habits were still the bane of all change.
Or, well, something all philosophimimic-al like that. Look, Rio wasn’t a freakin’ Aquatic major or anything, she was just a mostly-broke cephalopod living in a shared apartment with three other lovable goofballs, sleeping in sleeping bags and doing their best to resist giving up and moving back in with Mom and Dad!
Luckily, their recent big break had their rent covered for a good few months. Shoutouts to random weird Strangers in gray suits carrying strange overpowered chargers! One Salmon Run shift was all it took, and now…
They could, like…
Um.
…yeah, Rio didn’t know what to do, either.
There was Turf War, she supposed, but none of them were very good at it (except Vista, she was scary ) so that was out of the question. Salmon Run experience just didn’t translate all that well to it.
Marius evidently decided fishing was his new hobby, abandoning his shooters and other little bits of weapons to go annoy the local dock workers. So. That was something to do. Rio knew the area, and she’d bet a lot of money that she’d have to physically drag Marius away from a bunch of grouchy old guys for fishing on their job site.
Celia was, well, Celia. Ever since the Salmon Run, she’d decided just quietly chilling, not saying or doing much of anything, was her idea of enjoying their newfound wealth. The amount of smart-looking books in her room did keep mysteriously increasing, though, and Rio distinctly recalled finding a library card with Celia’s name on it the other day.
Vista was another story entirely, though. Lots of phone calls, texting, shady-sounding stuff. The walls were thin enough for Rio to listen in on some of it, and she frankly had no idea what was going on - just that it sounded pretty shady.
The Octoling was always very cool, very collected, but recently she looked like she was about to snap like a twig. Big eye bags, bloodshot eyes, twitchy tentacles, the whole shebang.
Rio liked to call herself an empath, but man, whatever Vista was going through was hard to figure out.
Was it the Stranger? Maybe Grizzco was up to something? City government wanting to take all their new money? Shell if she knew.
Maybe she should just… ask her? Something like, “hey, Vista, you okay? What’s up?”
…
Meh. If Vista was being all sneaky-like and doing shady stuff, Rio didn’t want any smoke from it.
But, she didn’t want to feel like a bad person either, so, hm. She had to do something… Oh! Positive affirmation notes! Those always worked for her, and they were reeeeally easy to make, too!
Nobody was home, right now - Marius was out and about terrorizing old dock workers, Celia was probably at the library, and Vista was off doing whatever Vista did that didn’t need her to be in the apartment. Nice and quiet, perfect for making art!
Her little art studio (read: an easel, a hastily taped up tarp, a folding table, and a whole carp-ton of the world’s cheapest art supplies piled up on one side of her bedroom) was well-stocked with sticky notes and markers, perfect for Rio’s plan.
Operation: Be Nice to Vista the Octoling was a go!
Grabbing a spare canvas from her pile of spare canvases, she set to work coating it with her patented Positive Affirmation Sticky Notes (cooler name pending.)
You are loved and among friends
I’m rooting for you, Vista
We’ll get through this
It’s gonna be alright
Hmm. Maybe some more specific ones, too?
We’re rich, you can do anything if you’re rich
Grizzco is totally jealous of us
The Stranger won’t get you in your sleep, he’s cool
Taxes suck, who needs to pay ‘em
Yeah! That’ll do it. Rio could physically feel the positive energy radiating off the notes! Ooh, maybe also going for her appearance might help, too?
Oh, man! This’ll make her day, for sure!
All she has to do is not get carried away, though…
Vista returns.
You’re… not quite sure what you’re looking at.
Part of you is saying, “wow, Vista, how did a frankly comical amount of sticky notes throw you off track? You, the hardened soldier, the amnesiac Metro survivor, the worst nightmare of the New Squidbeak Splatoon? Fazed? By sticky notes? ”
Naturally, everything has an opposite, and the opposing bit of your mind says, “screw you, I’ve never had half my room covered in the most sickly sweet wholesome sharksquit I think anyone’s ever seen! Literally - an entire wall is just positive affirmations! Give me a break!”
While your subconsciousness-es fight amongst themselves (literally, you can feel your back two tentacles angrily swiping at each other) you sigh and step into your room to see just what the shell was up with this.
Firstly, this room-scale disaster was very evidently Rio’s doing.
Simple deduction - Rio’s the only person in this entire apartment that has sticky notes, and you’ve seen what she does with them on her own property. You’ve seen a bit too much of what she does, frankly. It’s not hard to miss the horrifically garish neon colors she always uses.
Taking a closer look at the notes on your wall, it quickly becomes doubly evident Rio has decided to make you the target of her latest wholesome harassment campaign. Almost every note seems personalized to you, calling all sorts of things about you out.
There’s notes complimenting, like, virtually all of your outwardly visible traits, both personality-wise and appearance-wise. Everything’s there, to an almost creepy extent.
A whole section of wall is devoted to your skincare routine, for some reason. Another for tentacle care? The shell is this even about? What was Rio even trying to get at, specifically?
Right next to that, Rio spent a good few dozen sticky notes complimenting your fashion choices, as bland and utilitarian as they’ve always been. Underneath that? Praising the build quality of your boots!
You’re… very confused. A little scared, too. Mostly confused, though, as you keep reading through the seemingly endless wall of positivity. Just how the shell did she get all this done? You’ve only been out for a few hours?
After the fiftieth note in a row of weird, vaguely creepy sharksquit, it starts to blend together a bit. It’s started to turn into money-related affirmations, all sorts of stuff about investing in stocks and not being afraid to skimp out a bit on taxes, Grizzco being jealous, the list went on and on.
Your mind’s drifted off to wondering how the shell you were going to clean all this up without absolutely crushing poor Rio’s heart, when your eyes catch sight of one specific note:
The Stranger won’t get you in your sleep, he’s cool!
Oh, friggin’ lovely… Rio went for the jugular, mentioning the Stranger. And right after you’d freaked out last night thinking you saw the guy out and about right outside the apartment .
Man. Now you were even more creeped out.
The topic of the Stranger was something you didn’t really want to talk about with the rest of the gang, no thanks to some of the info your sources were passing your way over the past few nights, but Rio’s weird penchant for noticing things just had to kick in, huh?
Then again, you figured it was inevitable. Marius’ newfound love of fishing didn’t come from a sudden desire for fish, after all.
None of you had really come together to talk about it, though. That whole encounter, and the Salmon Run shift in general was something each of you seemingly decided to process in your own separate ways. Marius bought a cheap rod and went to go fish for the Stranger’s gear, Celia decided to consult her books for anything interesting, and Rio… did what Rio usually did - one of your walls spontaneously converting itself into the most wholesomely creepy thing you’ve seen since, well, ever.
Admittedly, the more you thought about it, the more you found yourself kinda appreciating the sentiment.
Rio was looking out for you, in her own strange, probably very social-media-influenced way.
…even if it was really weird, kinda creepy, and also just insanely destructive to your room’s carefully minimalist decor.
…
You’re still taking all these off the wall, though.
Rio won’t be home for a little while, since apparently she’d run off to go find Marius according to her last few texts in the group chat. You have some time to get to work painstakingly peeling several hundred sticky notes off your wall, and maybe a little extra time to figure out how to hide them or something.
Then, you’ll need to figure out how to keep Rio from flooding the apartment with her tears, keep the other two from clobbering you for making Rio cry, and then figure out how to successfully divest Rio from her stockpile of sticky notes so this doesn’t happen again.
Well, if defusing an angry, sobbing Inkling was anything like defusing a bomb…